D&D General [rant]The conservatism of D&D fans is exhausting.

[FrogReaver]

Okay going back to the moral line part of the definition of narrativist.

Does character safety vs character ambition form a moral line?

 

[Gimby]

The notion that there's some generic thing "RPGng" which has "best practice" that's a type of agglomeration of everything anyone ever said, isn't right in my view.

I'd agree with that - I think it's probably possible to come up with "worst practices" but I don't think best practices would be negations of those things.

 

[Maxperson]

And yet in so doing, as noted, you have disregarded what both of them actually SAID.

Forgive me for hoping that a conversation involves listening to the words people do, in fact, use.

Well, no. As I pointed out, what @Enrahim could be read both ways, but I didn't know which one. The same for @TwoSix. You're the only one disregarding one of the way to read what they.

You've chosen to read one in the worst light and the other in the best. I've said I don't think either one meant the worst, but I'm not ignoring either reading.

 

[Maxperson]

The rules is not addressed to you. It's addressed to GMs of Apocalypse World.

It's still redundant and funkily named. If they followed the other rules, and just made sure the players had fun, the characters' lives would not be boring.

That's assuming of course that the principle is in fact to not make the characters' lives boring. It's a dumb and redundant principle if that's the case. On the other hand if the principle is really to make sure the results of checks are interesting, then it's not a redundant principle, but only a badly named one.

I keep getting told, though, that the principle is not to make sure things are interesting, but it is in fact to make sure that characters without boring lives don't have boring lives.

 

[Maxperson]

That may not be what they intend it to mean but it's what comes across in print through use of that phrase.

At this point I'm not sure if they are just being super sloppy with these terms, or if in the effort to differentiate their game from others, they are choosing words and phrases that have other much more commonly used meanings.

Either way it's bad and causes confusion.

 

[Gimby]

At this point I'm not sure if they are just being super sloppy with these terms, or if in the effort to differentiate their game from others, they are choosing words and phrases that have other much more commonly used meanings.

Either way it's bad and causes confusion.

What does level mean?

 

[Maxperson]

@hawkeyefan gave one not far upthread from his own game, where on a failed roll to climb [something, I forget what] he narrated it as a success: they got to the top only it took longer than it should have.

I've already showed, though, how and why that might be the case in the way we run games. If the climb is an easy one and there would otherwise be no roll, but there's a time limit to get to the top or else something bad happens, you'd want to know if they could make it in time or not, and the roll would be for that.

Absent some corner case scenario like that, there would be no roll at all for that climb.

 

[Maxperson]

What does level mean?

In what context? The game uses multiples of it, and yes that's sloppy, too. All of the uses, though, are the commonly used variety.

Character level, is how we use it in real life. "Athletes perform at a higher level than normal folk do."

Dungeon level, is also how we use it in real life. "Which level of the structure are we on?"

I think there's a third way that is also a commonly used definition, but I can't remember it right now.

The sloppiness is not in using the word badly, but rather in using it multiple different ways.

 

[AlViking]

I've already showed, though, how and why that might be the case in the way we run games. If the climb is an easy one and there would otherwise be no roll, but there's a time limit to get to the top or else something bad happens, you'd want to know if they could make it in time or not, and the roll would be for that.

Absent some corner case scenario like that, there would be no roll at all for that climb.

It's also part of the 5e rules under Try Again that if it's something that will automatically happen you may still want to "call for a single ability check and use the result to determine how long it takes for the character to complete the task."

I wouldn't call that fail forward myself, because it's a task you can't fail. So a steep hill that you have to scramble up and it helps if you know how to climb? I might call for a roll if time matters.

 

[Gimby]

In what context? The game uses multiples of it, and yes that's sloppy, too. All of the uses, though, are the commonly used variety.

Character level, is how we use it in real life. "Athletes perform at a higher level than normal folk do."

Dungeon level, is also how we use it in real life. "Which level of the structure are we on?"

I think there's a third way that is also a commonly used definition, but I can't remember it right now.

The sloppiness is not in using the word badly, but rather in using it multiple different ways.

And how in the first use of the term, spell levels and character levels are not the same thing or gained at the same rates (in all but one D&D edition), despite the underlying meaning being similar.

The point is more that shorthand terminology that needs interpreting in the context of the rest of the text is entirely normal in RPGs, and always has been.